


Fragile Little Things

by indecentpause



Category: Original Work
Genre: Boarding School, Cutting, F/M, HEA, Happily Ever After, Mentions of a past hate crime, Non-Explicit Sex, One Shot, Self-Harm, Sexual Assault, Sheraton Academy (Original Work), Transphobia, Violence, deadnaming, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecentpause/pseuds/indecentpause
Summary: Angie has known she is a girl ever since she knew what a girl was.One trans girl's journey of self-discovery, from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood.Sheraton Academy is a now defunct RP, from 2003-2010.





	Fragile Little Things

The first time Angie remembers being called a boy, she is four years old. She knows it’s happened before then, of course, because she’s seen it in cards and letters and home videos, joyful cries of “Congratulations, it’s a boy!” and “He’s going to be a big guy just like his dad.”

But she isn’t. Even as a child, she is small and waify and delicate, like her sisters rather than her father. She looks more like her twin sister than a boy of her own.

She asks why they can’t shorten her middle name to Angie instead of her first to Kasey, but they just say, “Angie is a girl’s name, sweetie. Do you want people to think you’re a girl?”

That might not be so bad, she thinks, but everyone says she’s a boy, and they’re all bigger and older and smarter, so that must be what’s true.

 

When Angie dresses up in her biggest sister’s old clothes for the first time, it feels like home. They’re soft and a little worn at some of the hems and they smell like her perfume, a light, soft, citrusy scent, and wearing them feels like she’s finally real. Neither of her sisters think anything of it, her older sister Bailey nor her twin sister Dhalia, to them ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ don’t mean anything, and clothes are clothes are clothes. Fabric and thread and sometimes ribbons, on the nice ones.

“Don’t tell Mum and Dad,” they say. “They might not like it if they find out.”

Angie doesn’t understand why it has to be kept a secret from some and not others, because they’re just clothes, even if they do feel nicer than the ones her parents say she is supposed to wear. But she trusts her sisters. She loves them. They would never hurt her.

 

Angie is twelve when she meets Cordelia. Cordelia is fourteen and pretty and smart and nice and everything Angie wants to be, and was once everything Angie is right now. When Cordelia was younger people called her a boy, too, but she told them to their faces that they were wrong, and now her parents buy her girl clothes, like they should. Angie wonders if maybe she could do that, too, but her sisters -- a younger one, now, too, named Courtney -- say that’s a bad idea. Angie believes them. She hears the things her parents say about people who wear the wrong clothes and hair. She’s heard there’s even medicine you can take to be a girl, for real. Her parents say bad things about those women and girls. Angie couldn’t take it if she was on the receiving end.

But Cordelia teaches Angie things her sisters couldn’t, like how to stuff a bra and style a wig. Angie’s sisters just dressed her up like a doll in the secrecy of their rooms, but Cordelia lets Angie keep some clothes at her house, where Angie’s parents drop her off so they can walk to school together.

They don’t say bad things about Cordelia, because they don’t know.

Angie changes into her proper clothes at Cordelia’s and they walk to school together, and nobody there recognizes her, but then, nobody really knew who she was to begin with. She tries to be friendly and outgoing but there’s nothing special about her, nothing to make her more popular or well-liked than anybody else.

Her hands shake on her first day to class like that, in a long black wig and a knee length summer dress and little red flats with bows on them. She gets shoved a few times, and some of her teachers give her odd looks, but they have bigger things to worry about, like kids throwing rubbish bins at each other at lunch time and that one boy who brought a knife to school. They still call her Kasey, but she only has the strength to take one battle at a time.

 

It’s two years later that Cordelia and Angie are in the Square Mile shopping for new clothes, because they are both outgrowing their old ones. Cordelia has ducked inside the loo and usually Angie goes with her because there’s safety in numbers, but these are single occupancy, so Cordelia is safe. Angie still only wears girl clothes away from home. She thinks her sisters know, because they pulled her aside and told her they love her no matter what, and all they want is for her to be safe. But Angie hasn’t told them yet. In time.

She’s texting another friend from school when a big hand hits the wall beside her head. Angie starts and hugs her mobile to her chest and looks up. He’s big, very big, an adult, nobody who should be this close to a fourteen year old.

“What --” Angie starts, but he interrupts her, and he says:

“You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?”

 _I am not a thing,_ Angie wants to say, but she’s scared, and her words shrivel up in her throat, and all she can do is croak a little bit. Cordelia has taught her some Muy Thai but it’s all gone from her head now, she can’t remember a single step of it. He’s too close to throw a punch anyway.

But then his hand is slipping up her skirt and she can’t think, she flails out and tries to hit him, but that just makes him more insistent and then his hand is almost in her underwear and --

And then he punches her across the face with a shout, and white lights flash in her vision. Even at school nobody’s ever hit her. They’ve shoved her down stairs and called her Tracey and tranny but nobody’s ever _hit_ her. She collapses against the wall and falls, and his heavy steel toed boots are like horses’ hooves in her stomach, and then Cordelia is screaming “What the fuck! Don’t you fucking touch her!”

Now that there’s a witness, with more coming, he runs, and Cordelia drops to her knees and cradles Angie’s head so gently. A little old woman leans over Cordelia’s shoulder and whispers, “Are you girls okay?”

Angie’s wig slips off and the woman gasps and suddenly has somewhere else to be.

“Hang on, Angie, I’m calling 999 right now. Hello?”

Angie’s eyes flutter, and she doesn’t remember anything that happens next, even many, many years later.

 

Angie is in a hospital gown. Her clothes are in rags beside her, like they've been cut up but somebody tried to fold what was left of them. Her wig is on top. There’s a mirror on the ceiling at an angle to the bed, and Angie can see her makeup and tear streaked face in its reflection. She groans and her head lolls to the side. A sharp stab of pain shoots through her temple and she hisses. Her stomach feels much the same with every inhale.

She’s alone in the room. Did Cordelia leave her here?

Suddenly Cordelia barrels into the room, taking Angie’s hand and babbling too quickly, “I’m so sorry, they wouldn’t let me in because I’m not family, but your mum and dad are here and --”

“Kasey, what’s this?”

Angie’s mum picks up the wig and drops it like it’s made of spiders when she realizes what it is.

“Kasey, what --” She shoves Cordelia to the side and gasps when she sees Angie’s face. “Kasem Michaelangelo Daw, _what are you wearing?_ ”

“A hospital gown?” Angie goes for the joke, even though she feels like dying.

 

She doesn’t even have the chance to say goodbye to Cordelia before her parents check her out of the hospital and send her to the first in-country all boys’ boarding school they can find.

“That’ll straighten him out,” they say, over and over again. “That will fix him.”

But there’s nothing wrong with her, and nothing that needs fixing.

 

There are two trunks and three sets of the uniform waiting for Angie when she arrives. She’s given her room and house assignment, her class schedule, a Prefect to show her around.

She gets her own bathroom, but not her own shower. She has to share with the other students without parents who care about them.

She’s not sure how she feels about that.

Still, she unpacks her trunks, and is overjoyed to find out that her parents didn’t know her sisters kept some clothes for her when they grew out of them. Dhalia even sent some of her own. They aren’t as nice as the ones at Cordelia’s, but they’re still pretty, and they’re better than anything her parents would have packed.

Bailey even packed a fully stocked makeup case, _just in case_ the sticky note inside the lid says.

 

Angie makes a lot of friends at Sheraton Academy. She was expecting everyone to be stuck up and stuffy, but they’re all misfits who need to start over, too.

 

She’s shipped out a month before Bailey’s birthday, and Angie needs to find a present. There’s a little place called Smithen Village nearby, so she sets out on foot, because she’s told it isn’t very far away. Sure enough, she gets there ten minutes later, though it seems like less with her earbuds in. It’s small, but there are a lot of cute shops and restaurants and cafés, and she thinks, she’ll have to come back with some of her friends soon. But for now, she’s on a mission, and that mission is finding a birthday present. Nothing can top that makeup case, but she can try.

Angie almost misses the cute little boutique nestled into the corner, but a double take brings it to her attention and she peers in the window. A small white and pink striped clutch bag sits front and center in the display. She snaps a photo and sends it to Dhalia and Courtney, with the text, _Bailey’s birthday gift?_

She’s toying with her mobile and listening to just one earbud and she almost doesn’t hear the approaching footsteps over the popping of her gum, but the hand beside her head catches her attention.

“Hey, sweet thing, wanna come with me?”

The lie comes unbidden to her lips. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

The teenager chuckles -- he’s smaller than the last man was, less bulky, but almost as tall -- and he says, “He doesn’t have to know.”

“Actually, um, yes, he does, and he’ll be back any minute, so you should leave, because he gets very jealous and --”

She squeaks and flinches away when he puts his hand on her side. “Don’t touch me,” she says.

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that --”

This time, Angie remembers Cordelia’s training. She throws out a sharp elbow, and she can’t quite catch him in the throat, but she does get his chest. He coughs and takes a step back, but Angie is _angry_ , and she pushes him backwards, hard enough to topple him over. She kicks him hard in the side and screams, “When someone says ‘don’t touch me,’ you don’t fucking touch them, you bitch!”

Finally, she realizes she’s drawn a crowd, and she decides birthday shopping will have to wait. She whirls around and almost marches right into another boy. She slides back and pulls up her fists and his hands fly up.

“Not trying to start trouble,” he says, stepping to the side and giving her an out. “I was just on my way to help.” He nudges the other teenager with his boot. He groans, and Angie’s would-be rescuer says, “Looks like you didn’t need it, though. That was pretty awesome. Do you want me to walk you somewhere? Call someone for you? I just want to make sure you get wherever you’re going safe.”

“I just want to get out of here.”

A crowd has started to form, and nobody knows what happened, they just see Angie and her rescuer standing over the form of a groaning, injured teenager. They scuttle away, and Angie puts her hand on his arm. He looks at it, to his left where she’s walking beside him.

“My name’s Ronan,” he says. “I go to the boys’ school nearby.”

“My name’s Angie,” she says. After a pause, she adds, “I do, too.”

Ronan’s brow furrows. “Are you a crossdresser?”

Angie swallows, waiting for the rejection, the violence she’s grown so used to.

“I don’t know what I am,” she admits.

Ronan smiles softly. “That’s cool, too.”

“That’s… cool?”

“Sure. Doesn’t matter what you wear or who you are as long as you’re a good person.”

Angie smiles back.

She isn’t sure, but she likes to think she is.

 

Ronan ends up taking her out for sandwiches. He even pays for her meal. He asks serious questions about her milk allergy and seems genuinely concerned when he sees that cheese is on the menu.

Angie hates making a big deal out of it, but her allergy is so terrible, and she’s so used to it by now. She asks them to clean everything and explains that she will go into anaphylactic shock if they don’t.

The woman behind the counter seems more sympathetic than annoyed, which Angie is grateful for.

“Do you have an epi-pen?” Ronan asks. Angie pats her purse and opens up the front flap. She points to a small pocket on the very front.

“The only thing in this pocket, so it won’t be hard to find. Do you know how to use it?”

“Yeah. I had a friend back home who had one. She showed me.”

Angie smiles a little bit wider.

 

It’s six months later when Angie is on a video call with Cordelia that she realizes what’s happened.

She’s in the middle of telling a story about something that happened with Ronan earlier that week when Cordelia heaves a heavy sigh. Angie frowns.

“What?”

Cordelia rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “I love you, Angie, but Ronan is _all you ever talk about_. Seriously. Don’t you know anyone else at that school?”

The words come as naturally as the thaw in spring.

“I’m in love with him.”

Cordelia almost falls out of her chair.

 

Two months after that, Ronan is lying in a hospital bed with bandages on his wrists, and Angie wonders how she could have fucked up so badly that she didn’t notice the warning signs.

 

Ronan wavers in and out for a long time, spending most of his time sleeping. At one of the points when he’s awake, Angie takes his hand and asks, “Where did this come from?”

He’s silent for a long time. Finally, he says, “It would have been my and Bradley’s third anniversary.”

Angie tries not to let the hurt show on her face, that he’d try to kill himself over an ex, but --

“He was killed. In a hate crime. We were both attacked, but I was the only one who survived. He was screaming, and I couldn’t get to him, there were too many of them and --”

Ronan goes silent. Angie peeks out the door. Nobody seems to be there, just the aide there on his suicide watch, and she’s willing to risk getting yelled at if it can offer Ronan even the smallest amount of comfort. She crawls into bed with him. The aide says nothing.

Angie gently rubs her hand up and down Ronan’s upper arm, trying to do something, anything, to make him feel even a little less terrible. She knows she can’t make something like this better, but at least she can keep it from getting any worse.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I had no idea. I would have been there with you to help you through it if I --”

“Don’t,” Ronan murmurs back. “I didn’t tell you. There was no way you could have known.” He hisses through his teeth and says, “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I promise. I just… I used to have a problem with cutting, and it helps the emotional pain to distract with something physical, and I accidentally cut a little too deep.”

“It’s a miracle Ashe found you,” Angie whispers. Someone knocks on the door and clears his throat. Angie and Ronan turn to see Ashe standing in the doorway.

“I can come back,” he whispers.

“No, come in,” Ronan says.

Ashe does, taking the chair. They all sit in silence for a very, very long time.

 

After Ronan is physically stable, he’s transferred to a psych hospital back home where his mums live, in northern Maine. It kills Angie that she can’t visit or call, but she writes him letters every week, sometimes two or three. Sometimes they talk about big things, sometimes they talk about dumb things, sometimes they talk about nothing at all.

Ronan always writes back. She keeps every letter.

 

Angie is at her weekly therapy session with Nurse Sandy when he drops a question Angie is surprised she hasn’t heard before.

“Angie, we’ve been talking about your preference for girls’ clothes a lot, and your name choice, and things. Are you transgender?”

Angie’s eyes go wide. She frowns.

“Don’t you have to have dysphoria to be transgender?” she asks. “I’ve never had dysphoria.”

“Some might say so,” Sandy says, “but I don’t believe that’s true. Have you ever heard of gender affirmation?”

Angie shakes her head.

“Here, let me look some things up for you, and you can read them and see if any of it clicks.”

Sandy gives her a mountain of papers to read over the course of the week, and she promises to have them all read by her next appointment.

 

Gender affirmation makes so much _sense_. The joy it brings when someone calls Angie ‘she’ or ‘her’ or ‘young lady.’ Feeling more comfortable in girls’ clothes. Preferring a more feminine name than Kasey, even though Kasey really could go either way. Angie wants no mistake.

Angie finally has a word for what she is. She’s a trans girl.

She doesn’t tell Ronan. She doesn’t want to complicate his treatment or give him extra things to worry about. He has to focus on himself right now, not on her.

 

They both turn sixteen while Ronan is in treatment. Ronan sends Angie a crude crayon drawing of a calf in a field of flowers with his next letter, and she sends the most ridiculous, over the top, silly birthday card she can find in the village. Ashe sends a card, too, even though he’s still not quite sure how he feels about Ronan’s situation. If Ronan said he wasn’t trying to kill himself, Angie believes him. Ashe, not so much.

Ashe attempted suicide two years ago. He survived, too, and he sees Ronan’s… attempt? situation? almost as a betrayal.

A week later, Angie gets a last letter, saying Ronan has been discharged and will be back at Sheraton by the end of the week.

 

Ronan isn’t back yet when Angie gets the call from her father.

“Your mother and I think it best that we don’t talk to you for a while,” he says, as if they’d been talking to her at all to begin with. “We’ll still pay for your schooling and we won’t shut off your mobile or credit card, but we need some distance. To think about things.”

Angie has the feeling it’s her father that kept her mother from disowning her outright. He’s from Thailand, after all. People like her aren’t as frowned upon there.

“Dad, I --” But she doesn’t finish, because she doesn’t know what to say.

He hangs up, and she stares at the phone in silence for a long, long time.

 

Nurse Sandy writes Angie a note to miss class when Ronan comes back. She still attends her morning classes, because Ronan isn’t coming back until the afternoon. She doesn’t want to miss him, so she doesn’t go back to her room to change, and waits for him in her school uniform, Oxford shirt and striped tie and slacks.

She doesn’t even have a wig. Nurse Sandy is working on getting her a girls’ uniform from St. Catherine’s School for Girls down the way. He’s said he can’t transfer her anywhere without explicit permission from her parents, which won’t happen. Angie asked him not to keep them updated with anything they don’t need to know.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts when she hears the footsteps coming down the corridor, and she looks up from her shoes. Ronan is walking towards her with two middle-aged women behind him. They must be his mums?

“Ronan!” Angie cries. She runs up to him but stops short in front of him, unsure whether she should give him a hug. He’s always been iffy about physical affection.

Probably because of Bradley, she realizes.

But Ronan wraps his arms around her in a tight hug. He doesn’t comment on her clothes, and she’s so, so grateful. She hugs him back, squeezing tight.

“I missed you so much,” she whispers into his neck.

“I missed you, too,” he whispers back.

The moment is broken when one of the women introduces herself as Kate. They pull apart, but Ronan slides his hand down her arm to her own hand and wraps his fingers tightly around hers. Angie smiles at his feet.

“This is Angie,” Ronan says.

“So you’re the angel who wrote him all those wonderful letters!” the other woman says. “I’m Elicia. Thank you so much for keeping in touch with him all these months. The letters really helped him.”

Ronan flushes a bit. “I kept every one,” he says. “Even that ridiculous birthday card.”

Angie grins. “I kept all your letters, too.”

Kate and Elicia hug her, and they don’t comment on her clothes or hair, either. Angie beams.

“We’re staying in the nearby B&B for a week while Ronan settles back in. Hopefully we can see you again at some point!” Kate says.

“Yeah,” Angie grins. “I hope so.”

“We’ll let you go so you can talk and see your friends,” Elicia says, kissing Ronan on the cheek. Both his mums hug him and they wave and say goodbye, and Angie and Ronan wave back.

 

They go back to Angie’s room, first. Ronan cut himself in his bedroom the morning he ended up in the hospital, and he doesn’t want to be reminded of that just yet. Angie understands.

She puts his two suitcases in the corner and flops down on the bed. She pats it, thinking Ronan will sit, but instead he lies down beside her and puts his head on her shoulder. Angie sinks into the mattress, content for the first time since she learned about gender affirmation.

“What’s been new with you?” Ronan asks. “In our letters we mostly talked about me. How have you been?”

Angie closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath. “My parents aren’t talking to me anymore,” she blurts.

Ronan exhales onto her neck. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

“And Nurse Sandy helped me figure out what to call myself. I’m transgender. I’m a trans girl. He’s helping me get a girls’ uniform and everything.”

“Is that why your parents aren’t talking to you?”

“No. They still think I’m just a sissy boy in a dress.”

“Well, I think you’re the sexiest person in a dress I’ve ever seen.”

Angie’s breath catches. She turns toward Ronan, her face bright pink. “Really?” she breathes.

He buries his face in her arm and nods.

“I think I’m in love with you.” It comes out simply, a little quick, a little breathless, because she hasn’t said it since she told Cordelia.

Ronan stills, then relaxes.

“I think I’m in love with you, too.”

 

Their relationship progresses slowly. Hand holding and cheek kisses and little gifts. Paying for each others’ meals, sometimes. Angie is afraid of pushing too fast, because Ronan just got out of treatment, and she doesn’t want to do anything that might send him back. So she waits. She lets him take the lead.

When he kisses her for the first time, she can almost believe there will never be anything bad in the world again.

 

The first time they make love is fast and hard and desperate, a little awkward at some points, kisses that are too much teeth and hands in the wrong places. But Ronan says _I love you, Angie, I love you,_ and it’s like a prayer, and he says _you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful_ , and he’s said it before, but for the first time, it sinks into Angie’s bones, and it stays there.

 

The years pass, as they will, and Angie and Ronan graduate from Uni together, Angie with a degree in fashion design and Ronan with one in psychology. Angie is going to stop where she is and look for a job, but Ronan wants to continue on with school. He’s accepted to a good one just outside London, so they spend the next month looking for a flat and staying with Bailey in the meantime. Angie’s parents still aren’t talking to her.

Angie finds a job almost right away, although it’s just an editing gig at a fashion magazine. But one step at a time.

And now that she has a job, she can start her hormone therapy. The first shot hurts, but she gets used to it, and eventually it hurts less than pulling off a plaster.

 

Ronan and Angie come across the flat one rainy afternoon. There’s a for rent sign in the window, and Angie peers inside. It looks nice enough, and it’s in a clean, safe neighborhood. So they call the number on the sign and make an appointment to view it.

 

The flat’s floors are just slightly uneven and the faucet in the bathtub drips and the heat doesn’t always work right, but Angie and Ronan settle in just fine. Ronan gets a part time job at a nearby Lush to supplement their income. Angie just puts each of his paychecks, in full, into a savings account so they can eventually get a better place.

But for now, it’s perfect, because for now, it’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me at indecentpause.tumblr.com for more short stories and word of the day fics!


End file.
